DNA Barcoding and Metabarcoding of Complex Matrices

Dear Colleagues,

DNA barcoding is a molecular and bioinformatics tool that aims at identifying organisms’ species. The rationale of this approach is quite simple: Through the analysis of the variability in a single or in a few standard molecular marker(s), it is possible to discriminate biological entities. In the last fifteen years, this approach has largely been used to address taxonomic issues, as well as to achieve a reliable traceability system for raw materials, processed food items and other commercial products. Recently, due to the continuous advances in the field of high throughput sequencing, more and more applications have become possible in the field of molecular identification, especially with the development of DNA metabarcoding. This powerful approach enables simultaneous detection of multiple species in complex biological matrices. DNA metabarcoding can be adopted with high reliability and sensitivity, from environmental samples (e.g., soil, water and feces) to food products. Moreover, this revolutionizing identification strategy is also useful to analyze highly-processed materials containing degraded DNA, such as plant extracts, manufactured food, cosmetics or drugs plant-based products. Both DNA barcoding and metabarcoding demand suitable bioinformatics tools to achieve an efficient data processing and well-populated and verified public (or private) databases for the identification.

This Special Issue is devoted to the advances in DNA barcoding and metabarcoding to analyze complex matrices with the main goals of i) elucidating the technical and bioinformatical advances currently available for these tools; ii) defining the possible fields of application; and iii) the effectiveness of these approaches in the research and technology transfer strategy. The editors also invite submissions on advanced approaches, including DNA metagenomics, target-enrichment sequencing, and marker mining from genome skimming data.

We cordially invite researchers working actively in these fields to submit their original research manuscripts to this Special Issue.

Prof. Massimo Labra
Dr. Andrea Galimberti
Assoc. Prof. Hugo de Boer
Guest Editors

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